The state chronicle. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1883-1893, 1887-12-29
THE YANKEES.
RAMBLING NOTES ABOUT BOSTON
ASB BOSTON WAYS.
Eostan the Hc~; Place for Negroes ;io>-
ton people tbUse the irish aud Shed
Fears over the Negro.


Crookedness thy name is Boston, Not
moral crookedness | mean, but crooked
streets and byways. l could not say
crooked as a spiders web, for no respecta-
Die spider ever built web with half the
perYerscness that the streets of Boston
are laid off. They wind in and out and
tnrn all about in the most marvellous fash
ION, and nearly every one of them change
their names about every three blocks.
Iou start INTO WINTER street from Ire
mont, on the Common, and go down Win
ter street one block and when it crosses
Washington, 10 the magical change, it
becomes SUMNER street But | found it
just as cold at one end of that street as at
the other, as your humble scribe meander-
ed along there this afternoon with a young
Boston cyclone bowling through his long
legs. And some of the Avenues-I wish
you could see them Commonwealth
Avenue is about two hundred feet wide |
suppose, and is the pride of the town, but
they have all sorts and sizes of avenues
| saw one the other day hung on to a great
long name-so long | couldn't remember
but the avenue itself, without the name,
was only about five feet six inches wide
and seventy ytiye or "a hundred feet long.
but it was densely inhabited and by
rather high class of tenants too. But
worse than this still. | passed through
street or fare of some sort-could hardly
say -fare-only two feet three
inches wide, down in the dense business
part of the city. Would add, however, that
there were no stores opening on to that
pavement.
Still With all its crookedness, Boston is
an easy place to find Your way about. The
street car system is magnificent: You can
go almost anywhere you desire TOR a nickel.
And thus the city mas become great, not
as New York, but as London, that is by
the growth oil surrounding towns until
they cOalesce and are then incorporated.
These towns, though long ago annexed,
still retain their names as districts of the
city, and hence it is very simple to look
at your map a few minutes, see the loca-
ton of these districts and take Just the
car you want. The old part of Boston or
Boston proper, only contains about 49,
eco inhabitants while the real population
Of the city is about 675, 900
In the street cars you see something of
a city's life, and SO it is in these cars You
see more women than men in them, and
invariably so. One reason is, L suppose,
that there are 50 600 more women than
men IN Massachusetts,, and in Boston the
| proportion Of women is undoubtedly larger
| than in the country regions. Men do not
| always give up their seats TO ladies, in fact
1t is the exception TO do SO. And | find
two or three good reasons for this on
/ thinking Of it. In the first place, here the
/ evolution Of the individual as the unit of
society rather than the family is rather
mole marked than III the South. Women
crowd into the professions of men on all
| sides-they are lawyers, doctors, reporters,
stenographers, clerks in government Off
ces, telegraph operators anu a hundred
other things, sacred to men of the South:
they crowd and jostle men on every hand
in the fight for bread; hold conventions
| OF their own, whereas, resolve, make
speeches. conduct campaigns and show
their independence in hundred ways.
And then there are so many of them. If
| it We're the rule for a man to ytcate hi
seat when woman entered the car al
most every man would have to stand dur
ing the greater. part of his trips, for dur
= h.
bly, crowded till many must stand. Iou
cannot say that Boston men are ungen
tlemanly IN any sense. | have never
seen a more genteel and polite set of meI
any where, even to hack:nen and police
men. \ Boston man VIII 90 out of hi
way two blocks to show YOU TO the plac,
you want. Such kindness and consider
alton you wouldn't find in New York.
If | were negro and could find any
way to make bread and meat | think L,
Without any doubt negroes are uniforml.
treated with more consideration here tha'
i'll any city of the North it has been m
pleasure to visit. SO far as ! have beel
able to observe they are without question
accorded all the privileges the whites en-
joy certainly in public life. For instance
i'll speaking to the head waiter of tn
Commonwealth Hotel, who is a full blood
| ed negro, Boston lady would say to hin
: Mr.. Washington, will you do 50 and SO
, while we would simply call his first name
though we might add the MIR. if he wer
white.
| may add that Democracy here doe
not mean what il does In North CarOlin
:. there it represents the vast mass of th
| wealth, virtue, and intelligence of tn
: community; here as a rule it means jus
the opposite-t means the riff-raff rag ta
and bob tail of creation, led by Ben But
ler or men Of a much smaller and meane
pattern. Democracy here means too til
a saloon. | have not had the pleasur
: of meeting a single Democrat since hay
been here. l hope at least for the sake {
: the name that some of them are member
church with which | am acquainted
haven't heard of him yet in the thre
e weeks Eve been here and I've been lOokin
1 for him. OF course | know there al
some good men here who are Democrats
i as there are some good white men in Mort
Carolina who are Republicans. Bostc
u people are always growing about the Iris
}. and shedding tears over the negro, viii
we down South are growing about II
negro and shedding tears for unhapI
Ireland. It's funny, too, that the peop